Were you looking for my reaction?

[raybear]

This morning after putting together a job application for the public library and watching trans kids and their parents on Oprah, I sat down to translate this same poem that's been haunting me for over two weeks. After reading version after version, it's hard to believe new ways of writing it could come out of my brain, but something always does.

Except, I think my second version is best.



To the Tune: Ju Meng Ling
by Li Ching-Chao

Everyday I remember
The pavillion and the stream,
Day turning to dusk,
We turning to home,
Too drunk to find the way.

Laughter dies down,
It's late and we find a boat,
But get lost among blooming lotus,
Surrounding us in deep darkness.

Struggle to break loose
Struggle to go through
We break the silence
And startle a line of egrets off the sandbank.

--- translated by Raybear
(just be glad I didn't post the bad adaptation poem I had to write for the class!)



This poem breaks me every time I look at the translated characters and try to wrestle with making it into an american english poem that will adequately express the heartache of the poet who's writing about re-living simple memories of her late husband who she completely loved and was killed.

And then to add to the emotional gutwrenching, I've been listening to Arvo Part's Sanctuary on the stereo. The other night I was thinking about Educating Esme and how I hadn't spoken with her in a few weeks, so I called her up and left a message. Then last night when I was looking for music to set the scene of my mini-manifestation ritual, I remembered that she gave me this CD several years ago and I loved it but hadn't listened to it in awhile. (I spend so much time listening to music on the computer, I forget about all the albums I own on CD and vinyl.) I listened to it last night twice. The first time while trying not to freak out about waiting to hear back from a job and my loss of income because Kingdom Come was cancelled on Friday. The second time while reading on the couch which later turned to half-dozing except I never fell fully asleep because my brain kept following the violins and I started having imageless dreams -- they were only sound. It felt like I was really hearing the music. So this morning I put it on again, wanting more.

It's grey and beautiful outside. I was going to go downtown to hand-deliver my application to Harold Washington Library, but instead I will consolidate all my various pieces of mail that need sending and bike in the mist to the post office before winding my way elsewhere. I have an itch to go, to travel, to escape. Even if only for an hour through the unexplored residential streets of the west side of Chicago.

Comments

[dykestar.livejournal.com]

that's so beautiful. just the translation nearly made me tear up. I wish I knew how to read it before translation. I have a feeling it's like reading Neruda in English, beautiful, but not quite the same.

[raybear.livejournal.com]

I had to translate a Neruda poem for my last assignment! It was hard, in part just to get past my hang-ups about not feeling worthy to translate.

[dykestar.livejournal.com]

yeah, I get that feeling too. I also get it when interpreting art. It's just like, "Who am I to tell you what this brilliant person meant?" It's something you just have to commit to and do, though.

[cocolola.livejournal.com]

neruda is in my top five, and maybe there are about a million people who will damn me to hell for what i am about to write but... i like some of his poems in translation more (?maybe differently?) than the original. the difference in punctuation, lines, word choice can be really lovely.

[raybear.livejournal.com]

what i've been learning from my translation seminar is that translating is basically a form of writing, a way for the translator/writer to inhabit the original writer and try to keep the same energy and experience but put it into a different language, capturing literal as well as figurative meanings (which is extra hard when it comes to humor). so perhaps the translated version just appeal to you more because the translator used a slightly different manner to convey the same energy, or perhaps it appeals to the english part of your brain.

one person in my seminar argues that one can never actually read any non-english work, that it's really only the translator's work. in other words, i've never actually read any dostoevsky since i can't read russian. i think that's a bit of a stretch.

[cocolola.livejournal.com]

we have a discussion like this in the class that i teach, about whether a poem in translation is the same poem as the original. so maybe i'm with that person in your seminar when i say that my vote is no... i think it is a different work altogether. related, but still. maybe we have just read what is accepted as dostevsky for english only speakers. of course, on can read whatever one wants in whatever language that person happens to be literate in.